“Not Just A Model That’s Pretty”: How Marianne Fonseca Scored Funding For Gente And Plans To Build The Body Care Brand
In the seven months she pitched Brazilian-inspired body care brand Gente to venture capital investors, model-turned-founder Marianne Fonseca faced skepticism, rejection and the constant refrain that its numbers “weren’t big enough.” Finally, she encountered one—Webster Capital founder Tony Olson—and crucially his Brazilian wife, Izabel, who understood it.
“Sometimes you find that one investor that believes in you as a person and your story and your storytelling and why you made the brand,” says Fonseca. “Tony’s wife is Brazilian, so it wasn’t something he had to learn. He already knew about lymphatic drainage and the benefits.”
Lymphatic massage is a body-shaping staple in Brazil, and Gente, which Fonseca launched in 2022, wants to ride the wave of it spreading in the United States, where it’s still niche. The brand’s bestseller, the $34 body lotion Lymphatic Drainage Effect, for example, promotes that it delivers lymphatic massage-like benefits such as addressing excess water retention.
The cultural disconnect between first-time founder Fonseca’s Brazilian experience and business in the U.S. was a fundraising challenge for her. “I’m an immigrant, I’m a woman,” she says. “Many of these meetings and rooms can be filled with just white men, and it’s very hard to show them that I can do something and that I’m not just a model that’s pretty, that I have a good idea.”
Webster Capital’s seed funding, described as a “major investment,” for Gente closed this month following negotiations that kicked off in December last year. Webster Capital is a single family office that Olson, longtime CEO of SPINS, the natural products industry data provider, started in 2021. Prior to its seed funding, Gente secured an undisclosed amount of investment from angels and Patrick Finnegan, founder of early-stage VC firm Intuition Capital, to get off the ground.
With body care advancing at a faster rate than skincare overall lately, per market research firm Circana, body care brands such as Nécessaire, W, Luna Daily and Uni have received funding. According to Gente, its sales are up 67% from last year and 73.43% on a month-over-month basis. It didn’t disclose sales figures, but industry sources estimated to the publication Women’s Wear Daily in 2022 that the brand could do up to $25 million in retail sales in its initial two years on the market.
Gente’s new funding is slated to be used for product expansion, operations and international campaigns, while Gente remains dedicated to maintaining a small team and slow approach to growth. “Until now, we did everything in-house,” says Fonseca. “We have a third-party logistics partner now, but I’m not going to take this money and hire a bunch of people. I want to be careful. I don’t believe in spending crazy.”
Along with Lymphatic Drainage Effect, Gente’s assortment contains $32 Bye-Bye Cellulite, $12 The Ipanema Scrub, $32 The One Body Butter, $20 Tropical Rain Shower Gel and $16 Body Gua Sha. Gente has discovered that bundles are a big sales driver, and its $146 Body Care Revolution bundle with its entire six-product range accounted for 61.6% of its revenue last year.
The brand’s forthcoming product releases in May and June will stay in the body care category, but facial products are in the pipeline for later on. Mentioning that Gente is shooting a campaign in Rio de Janeiro showing how Brazilians incorporate lymphatic drainage in their everyday lives, Fonseca thinks Gente has plenty of runway ahead to push forward in the lymphatic drainage area.
She says, “I want to still be a body care brand and really established as a body care brand before I go any other route.”
Gente has benefited from celebrity buzz, including a January shoutout from Ivanka Trump on the podcast “The Skinny Confidential.” Fonseca says Gente’s sales spiked immediately from the shoutout, but she deferred on disclosing how much. Fonseca met Trump two years ago at Nobu in Aspen. Trump and Hailey Bieber were reportedly instrumental in Drew Taggart’s proposal to Fonseca last year. Taggart is a DJ and member of The Chainsmokers.
The well-known personalities in Fonseca’s circle have been a powerful engine for Gente. Fonseca has over 620,000 followers on Instagram. Fiancé Taggart has 1.1 million Instagram followers. “I have friends that will use their platform and talk about the brand, and it’s always organic,” says Fonseca. “It’s what makes me really happy.”
Gente’s core customers are 25 to 45 years old, although Fonseca says it’s reaching even younger ones due to TikTok. It’s currently sold in direct-to-consumer distribution and on Amazon as well as via Revolve and Anthropologie. The brand is in talks to enter a department store retailer. International expansion is a long-term goal, and it’s already had orders from Europe and the Middle East online. Fonseca says, “We’re definitely planning to grow more globally.”
Gente runs paid advertising across social media and Amazon. “We convert four times what we spend on ads,” says Fonseca, adding specifically that the brand has a return on ad spend (ROAS) of 369.63%.
User-generated content and affiliate partnerships have increasingly become components of its marketing mix. “In the beginning, it was kind of hard to find girls who wanted to do videos because then I had to teach them how to do the [lymphatic drainage] massage,” says Fonseca. “Now there’s so many girls that already know how to do it, and they’re happy to collaborate.”
In-person events and brand collaborations are another piece of Gente’s marketing. It hosted a sculpting class with Alo Yoga last week and provided products to Fabletics for a run club and Kosas for an influencer trip to Mexico. Next month, a spa event is scheduled to coincide with product launches.
